Official Street View Website

Monday, June 30, 2008

You probably recently heard that ABC News has put out an article regarding EveryScape, another street-level panorama service. EveryScape offers many views of places all over the world, and they currently have at total of sixteen locations. Some "scapes", as they're called, even go indoors. Lately, many Internet users have even started to claim that EveryScape is better than Google Street View, for the following reasons:

EveryScape has some locations that Street View has not yet.

EveryScape goes inside buildings.

Their goal is to "scape" the whole world.

They display advertisements directly on the image.

OMG they have an awesome 3D speed forward effect!

Well, each of these reasons are false, and for the following reasons:
Yes, EveryScape has some locations that Street View doesn't have at the moment, seven, to be exact. But Street View has 48 locations that EveryScape doesn't have. So, Street View has EveryScape already beat in number of locations.
Yes, EveryScape goes inside some buildings, but this happens only extremely rarely. But rthat's still some. So, EveryScape has Street View beat in number of interior locations, even though it's a very small quantity.
Yes, EveryScape's goal is to "scape" the whole world, but so is Street View's goal, and Street View is closer to accomplishing it, so Street View has EveryScape beat again there.
Yes, EveryScape displays ads directly on the "scape", but that's also its disadvantage, since many users don't want to see a panorama cluttered with ads. Most Internet users don't even click Internet ads (from AdSense experience, I can tell you this is true), much less want to see them. So Street View has EveryScape beat there.
Yes, EveryScape has a cool-looking 3D transition effect. Can't beat that, but it would also cause unnecessary bandwidth, time, and it's pretty much just showing off.
In conclusion, EveryScape is just another street-level panorama service like MapJack and street-side. For more reasons that these just don't compare to Google Street View, see this earlier post. It's not hard to see that Street View is the best on the 'Net!